But that fortification set him inside entrenchments that were a damned embarrassing trap to be in, a king of Ylesuin sitting still while the Elwynim hammered at him. They had gotten ahead of him with their bridges. He might try to take them down without their using them. But it was a long river, and action at one place might bring action at another-besides that he had limited numbers of men to take away from the fields to create such an elaborate defense.
They would more than lose their harvest for certain if Henas’amef fell.
And, with all disadvantages, the notion of making Henas’amef too tough a nut to crack did tie the Elwynim down to a siege in which they could be under attack from the other provinces, unless they wished to rush past an untaken town to attack Guelemara. That would be a mistake if they did it, exposing their supply lines to attack from Henas’amef.
Fortifying Henas’amef with earthworks would not please the peasantry, of course, nor the lords who derived income from those fertile, long-tilled fields, which in turn thrived on the sweepings of the lordly stables.
But fortifying that outer wall might be an answer to the town’s other defensive faults.
He had the book with him. It was in his small chest of personal items.
He was reading it again, had it under lock and key so as not to have it disappear to the Amefin, and hoped the Elwynim earls did not have a better book. They might. The Quinalt burning of the libraries had not gotten to their side of the river, and gods knew what they had, as gods knew what was sitting in Mauryl’s tower, prey to the mice and Tristen’s fancied enemy.
He wished he could see how magic worked into Tashfinen’s account.
Emuin had professed not to know, except to say the Sihhé had used it-or wizardry, which distinction Emuin had drawn in Tashfinen’s case, and an angry nine-year-old had not paid strictest attention: gods, he’d deserved the stick, and not gotten it at the right times.
He also wished he could believe he had months to prepare. But the system of scouts and post riders he had instituted (lacking magic or a wizard reliably willing to inform him) had been supposed to shuttle back and forth with messages regularly from a watch on every bridgehead on the river, and settling King’s men in way stations or villages, whichever happened to be feasible.
It was supposed to keep him constantly apprised of events on the river, and damn it, the system, like any new system, began with problems: the messengers from two of the three sites had come trailing in, one two hours late, complaining of heavy rain, and the other confessing that he had mistaken an intersection of roads in the dark and the bad weather and ridden an hour and more along a road that proved to lead to a sleeping and terrified village.
But the rider from Emwy-Arys never had made it in at all. He hoped it was for as silly a reason, but it was making him increasingly concerned-the man never had shown up, and now, at mid-afternoon, he reckoned he could begin looking for the return of the messenger who had to check on the messenger.
And if that man failed, they could assume that their entire scheme had worked and that something had gone very wrong on the section of border nearest Marna, the section where they had patrols out, the section where his father had been ambushed, and where they had a village of dubious loyalty.
If something had happened to that messenger, (and he was down to asking Emuin whether he could see that matter, once Emuin’s headache subsided) it meant a siege of Henas’amef, he would wager, before snowfall, the Elwynim intending to disrupt the harvest and prevent Henas’amef from storing adequate food, as well as to rampage through the villages during a time when the roads did not make relief easy.
It meant, of course, that the Elwynim disrupted their own harvest by taking men away from the farms, but if in years previous they had had the foresight to hold reserves of their grain, they could bring it from Elwynor, managing the extended supply that Grandfather had declared was the most important item to have secured: Never rely on the farmers for food, was another of Grandfather’s rules; it makes the farmers mad, gives your enemy willing reports, and it never amounts to what you think it will once you most need it.
Grandfather was silent on the problems of feeding the farmers of Amefel while the armies of five provinces and all the enemy camped on their fields and their sheep-meadows—when the Amefin were farmers and shepherds of the chanciest loyalty in all Ylesuin. As well the King did stand on their pastures; holding Amefel otherwise would not be possible.
And damn Efanor’s Quinalt priest, who had been sniffing around the local market, and had this very morning, in these unsettled times, had the town guard arrest a simples-seller who happened to have the old Sihhé coinage for amulets in her stock. Efanor of course supported the priest.
Efanor- The door opened, a guard holding the door and a windblown, panting page unable to get out his message. “Your Majesty!” the boy said, turning a bow into a hands-on-knees gasp for wind. He had run the stairs, by the look of him. “Your Majesty. The Elwynim—”
It was a cursed bad word on which to run out of breath.
“—with banners and all, coming on the gates, Your Majesty!”
“The whole army?”
A wild shake of the head. “No, Your Majesty. No.” Another space for breath. “With the Ivanim, down by their camp. They’ll be coming in the gates and right through the town next! So the messenger said!”
“Will they?” Cefwyn did not think so. He pushed back from the table and levered himself to his feet. “Boy, run down to the stable, have horses saddled. Taywys—” That for the guard who had brought the boy.
“Advise the Lord Commander, and have men to ride down with me.
Go!” The leg hurt and he did not look forward to the stairs. He had arranged his whole day so that he need not go down those steps today, and now the damned page had gone, the guard had gone, the servants were not at hand, and, needing to dress for outdoors, he was daunted by the prospect of doing it alone: he had begun to measure such small distances as that to the door and back as he had only a fortnight ago measured distances between provinces.
But the whole Elwynim troop could be riding through the gates and measuring his inadequate town walls if he delayed to call Annas and the pages and put on the prudent mail shirt or the elegant velvet coat with the royal crest. If he had to deal with some Elwynim demand for territory or a challenge to combat, he could cut a martial enough figure on horseback with a soldier’s cloak slung about him, and damn what was beneath.
He took the cursed stick in hand, ordered the door guard as he passed to go back and fetch his cloak, and started down the hall without it: he declined to descend the stairs carrying its weight or having it swirling across his view of the steps when his footing was unsure as it was. The one guard hovered while he descended, and the Olmern lad, Denyn Kei’s-son, who had gone back to fetch his cloak, overtook him before he reached the bottom, offering it to him as he went.
“I’11 put it on outside,” he said curtly to Denyn, and to the guard who had dogged him down the steps as if he could have rescued him from behind in a falclass="underline" “Don’t flutter ’round me, damn it. If you’d be of use, get in front.” He thought about descending the outside steps without the stick, but he considered the spectacle and, worse, the omen of the King of Ylesuin tumbling down them onto the courtyard, and let prudence rule.
The whole descent took long enough that a horse was saddled and ready for him at the bottom—not Danvy: Danvy was down in pasture, recuperating from his cuts and bruises, and Haman’s chief assistant had given him that damned blaze-faced, showy black Efanor had ridden, when they had saddled everything in the stable to remount Efanor and his company: Synanna, —who was a good horse in most points, but tall; and facing that climb to the stirrup, in which he had to use the help of the guard, he thanked the gods it was his right, not his left, leg wounded.